Keeping A Child Away From The Other Parent Can Backfire

Further, most children, either through Court action or when as teenagers they seek out the alternate parent, do get to know the avenged parent. When their experience of the avenged parent conflicts with what they were told about them, in other words, when a parent who was supposedly bad, turns out to be good, the children then turn on the parent who had originally undermined the relationship. Children who eventually establish relationships with parents they were kept from without good cause, feel resentful for having been misled. They come to reject the parent who sought to keep the children for themselves.

As adults, these children forgo the relationship with the parent who raised them in favor of the parent who was kept away. As the vengeful parent plans for the demise of the other parent’s relationship in the short term, in the long term these parents not only hurt their children, but also themselves. They come to lose their children when they get older.

If the issues with the other parent have more to do with one’s own upset or anger, then seek counseling to manage feelings in view of the child’s needs to have reasonable relationships with both parents.